Building Inclusive Lab Workplaces for Community College Students

2024 Update!

In 2022-2023, with support from NSF ATE (DUE #2055735, 2055309), University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) and City College of San Francisco (CCSF) partnered with the California Life Sciences (CLS) Racial & Social Equity Initiative to pilot the Inclusive Research Mentor-Manager Training series aimed at helping life science labs and organizations build inclusive management practices and work places. This training was designed to teach current and future industry professionals how to efficiently and effectively train, performance manage, and support interns and employees of diverse backgrounds in an effort to foster inclusive, high-functioning working relationships.

The workshop series was offered 4 times in 2022-2023 encompassing our CCSF-UCSF team’s 10th-14th iterations of this highly popular workshop series, previously known as TRAIN-UP, initially developed for UCSF postdocs and graduate students mentoring CCSF interns. These workshops were tailored for scientists who currently (or intend to) mentor and/or supervise in either academe or industry, with an emphasis on mentoring-supervising community college students.

The Training: The Inclusive Research Mentor-Manager Training series was offered as seven or eight 90-min live interactive virtual workshops scheduled over four weeks (May-June 2022/2023 and October-November 2022/2023):

• Module 1 - Assess Yourself: How inclusive are you at work/in the lab?
• Module 2 - Assess Yourself: How ready are you to manage your mentee/employee’s productivity?
• Module 3 - Effectively supervising people who aren't you: Managing different workstyles
• Module 4 - How to transparently set (performance and conduct) expectations
• Module 5 - Teach/train and delegate: Using best practices to train your diverse team
• Module 6 - Communicating inclusively: developing your own feedback strategy and style
• Module 7 - When someone isn't meeting your expectations: Strategies and resources to manage performance equitably
• Module 8 - How to inclusively hire: Which strategies will you use?

Workshop Descriptions 

Outreach: Our team reached out with information about the Inclusive Research Mentor-Manager Training series to biotech-bioscience academic and industry professionals with an emphasis on those that had previously mentored, hired or supported community college students.  

Registration & Attendance: We were thrilled to have over 650 scientists participate in the Inclusive Research Mentor-Manager Training series in 2022-2023, including 210 from the biotech industry from over 75 companies, including: Amgen Inc., Avirmax, Bio-Rad, BioAmp Diagnostics, BioLumen, Bristol Myers Squibb, Caribou Biosciences, Chimera Bioengineering, Circle Pharma, Inc., Citeline, CODA Biotherapeutics, Cytokinetics, Inc, Denali Therapeutics, Eclipse Bioinnovations, Eikon Therapeutics, Genentech, Inscopix, Invitae, Lab Launch, Lin-zhi International, Inc, Mammoth Biosciences, Mantra Bio, Meissa Vaccines, Merck, Navega Therapeutics, Neuron23, Nitrase Therapeutics, Nkarta Therapeutics, Novozymes, Inc., Nura Bio, Olema Pharmaceuticals, Pace Labs, Pendulum Therapeutics, PerkinElmer, Pipeline Therapeutics, Prose Foods, Rubik Therapeutics, Salve Therapeutics, Scientist.com, Scopi, Skoruz Life Sciences, Sonoma Biotherapeutics, Soteria Biotherapeutics, Ultragenyx, and XiltiX North America.

• 192 people completed the entire workshop series in 2022-2023 (12-16 hrs of training!) 
• Each 90 min workshop hosted 55-150 live participants on Zoom, including multiple forms of interactivity.

It was exciting to have had such high engagement with the Inclusive Research Mentor-Manager Training. Due to the high enthusiasm, UCSF has decided to institutionalize the training with plans to offer it twice a year with opportunities for those outside of UCSF in academia and industry to attend, or host the training for their own organization: career.ucsf.edu/mentor-manage.

To learn about the tools developed for this training check out our Building Inclusive Labs website that includes 35+ frameworks and tools from our trainings!

Participant Feedback:

From a survey of 79 participants to the first workshop:

• 100% of respondents agreed/strongly agreed that “The workshop was a good use of my time.” & “I will implement at least one tool or strategy from today's workshop.”
• 98% of respondents agreed/strongly agreed that “There is a need for this type of training at my organization.”
• 96% of respondents agreed/strongly agreed that “This workshop prepared me to better mentor-manage individuals from diverse backgrounds.”

Quotes from attendees:

This course has been a phenomenal and eye-opening learning experience about inclusivity, mentorship and people management. A must-have for all people that work with other people!  Scientist, Denali Therapeutics 

After attending all the 7 sessions, I really do see the great value for investing your time in this training course. You will NOT regret the time you'll put into the materials, new ideas and insights, and mind-provoking concepts you'll learn how to be an effective but also INCLUSIVE manager in research settings. Senior Associate Scientist, Amgen

This course opened my eyes to inclusivity in hiring, managing, interviewing and daily interactions at work in areas that may have been blindspots for me. We've been given tangible tools to use in conversations with our co-workers and management to bring more openness and understanding of each other in the workplace. I found workstyle preferences to be particularly useful and interesting for learning more about my colleagues and even how I work best. While I've had quite a few years of experience in the past of managing people, when it comes to inclusivity, I think I've worked off gut instincts rather than having the training and knowledge to understand the tools, thought processes and strategies for inclusivity. Associate Director QA,  Denali Therapeutics

Thank you so much for a detailed and instructive course. It has, by far, set the standard for the environment I hope to work in and create for my future mentees. Research Associate II, Bio-Rad Laboratories

Workshop Presenters/Facilitators:

• Naledi Saul, MPM, Director, UCSF Office of Career and Professional Development and Interim Chief of Staff (SAA/Graduate Division)/PI for the NSF ATE collaborative grant: A Collaborative Approach to Work-Based Learning in Biotechnology: Building Inclusive Lab Environments.(DUE #2055735)
• Karen Leung, PhD, Biotechnology Faculty, City College of San Francisco/PI for the NSF ATE collaborative grant: A Collaborative Approach to Work-Based Learning in Biotechnology: Building Inclusive Lab Environments.(DUE #2055309)

Example Materials:

Throughout the workshop series participants were provided multiple frameworks and tools to foster inclusivity in their workplaces and in their roles as mentor-managers. This frequently included an "Inclusivity Check" outlining multiple practical steps that could be taken to build inclusivity into regular activities, such as meetings.

How this works fits into our current ATE project:

This work builds on our first CCSF-UCSF collaborative ATE grant (2018-2021, DUE #1801186, 1800998) in which we:

• Developed of a comprehensive training program for internship mentors who wish to counter inequities in the lab and a parallel training for community college students to navigate barriers to inclusivity in the workplace, both utilizing practical tools to operationalize inclusivity in the lab
• Published a framework for inclusive bioscience workplace practices in academic labs
• Developed a novel CCSF-UCSF Inclusive Mentoring Fellows program, in which UCSF internship mentors are coached as they apply inclusive workplace practices while mentoring CCSF interns.

In our current ATE project (2021-2024, DUE #2055735, 2055309) we are: 

• Translating our trainings for biotechnology community college students and mentor-managers from an academic to an industry setting (the Spring 2022 Inclusive Research Mentor-Manager Training series was our first iteration of this more industry focused training)
• Disseminate those trainings nationwide to community college students and biotech/bioscience mentor-managers through online platforms to foster the knowledge & skills needed to operationalize inclusivity and reduce barriers for community college students in the biotech workplace 

If you are interested in attending the Inclusive Research Mentor-Manager Training series in the future and/or Workplace Navigation Training for community college students and alumni, please complete our Building Inclusive Labs - Training &/or Resources Request Form or reach out via email:

Karen Leung karen.leung@mail.ccsf.edu

James Lewis jlewis@gmail.com